hello, I hope all is groovy. It's quite good here. I have just taken delivery of the all new Trunk LP, that is not actually a Trunk LP. I was asked to make an LP for a book by the publisher called Four Corners Books. They wanted to make an LP with a book, so they asked me what book I'd like to make some music for. I immediately said 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea as 1) I've never read the book and 2) it would give me an excuse to try and make some music with an underwater thing going down. And they were up for it. Well that was about two years ago and it has taken ages - one of the many reasons being because I had the daft idea of having a sleeve done by a modern naive-style tattoo artist, in a weird knod to scrimshaw which I thought was relevent to the book and that. Six months later we were still trying to find a tattoo artist who could really draw and would actually communicate with us about doing an album sleeve and not actually a human sleeve (we even had one tattoo artist who only wanted to do the job if he could draw Napolean. I mean I ask you). Anyway, it's all done now, the art is by Liam Sparkes and it looks amazing. The gatefold sleeve has all his drawings, inside is the complete Jules Verne steampunk classic, and a blue vinyl LP of underwater music. The LP can be bought here. It is not available in shops yet, unless you go to a book shop.
Because there is a Jonny Trunk LP for sale and a sea theme going down I thought I'd put up The Living String Sea LP for 50p (it's an odd light orchestral LP with the super duper track "Faraway Places" on it) and also my first LP; it's full of madness and was a genuinely brave attempt at being a groovy artist. That album also stars a mousetrap. Both albums can be found here on the #50pFriday page.
Carrying on the tattoo theme here is a snip from Tattoo, a classic doc from 1975 by John Samson, the man who did the Arrows doc with Eric Bristow we enjoyed a few weeks ago. Watch out for the snake. Also watch out for Rusty, wife of Bill Skuse (AKA "Jeff Jaguar") who ran the tattoo parlour where I grew up in Aldershot. I had a game of snooker with her once.
I am now off to meet my sisters for a cup of coffee. A little part of me really wants to dress up as a woman and surprise them.
Thanks for listening.
Jonny